Page 75 of Meet Me Back Here

Ava snaps her mouth shut before pushing up on the table and looking around.

“Tyler,” she calls when she sees him. “I think we need shots!”

Forrest raises his arm to check his watch, but I cover the face of it with my hand.

“Time doesn’t exist today,” I say. “It’s game day, and happy hour started at sunrise.”

I think he’s going to protest, but he lowers his hand and takes a resolved breath.

Of course, Tyler feigns being wounded when he arrives with a tray of vibrant pink prickly pear cactus tequila shots and sees me cozied up beside Forrest.

“I have to know. Is this something new in the past two weeks or were you lying to me?” He still can’t keep the smile off his face.

“Tyler, I already know better than to lie to you, so I swear we didn’t, but this is something very, very old,” Forrest says with a knowing look at me.

“Fine. If it has to be, then it has to be,” Tyler acquiesces, passing out drinks.

Forrest raises his first.

“To the DCU Fighting Cacti?” he offers.

“To the DCU Fighting Cacti!” we all chorus around him and throw back our shots.

Tyler even takes one with us. Is he allowed to? No, not really. But nobody here is going to rat him out.

Poor Santi, newly twenty-one, coughs on his, not realizing the danger hidden in the pretty pink color. Cristian thumps his brother on the back and passes him a water, and we all cheer again when Santi gives a thumbs up.

We drink. We eat more tacos than seems humanly possible. We make friends with complete strangers, so long as they’re in DCU green.

Then we wander as a stumbling pack of lunatics through campus to the parking lot across from the stadium to do it all over again. In every direction is green, as far as the eye can see—shirts, shorts, hats, banners, flags, turf, painted bodies. No Southern Arizona red would dare come here.

For today, campus has become a festival, and even those who couldn’t give a crap about football on any other day find it in themselves to care today. It’s hard not to when even the air is buzzing in anticipation. I can practically feel the energy under my skin.

At one point, we end up splitting up for a bit when Jenna and Melina want to stay by a pop-up band and dance, but Ava, Liam, Cristian, and Santi somehow still want to search for more food. Forrest and I are scanning the lot to figure out where to go when a pack of students pull us into a cornhole tournament to fill out the bracket.

By the time we reconvene to head into the stadium, we’re all sufficiently buzzed with warm skin and full hearts, and half of us have little cacti painted on our cheeks. Santi opted for the enormous cactus across his whole face.

It’s game time.

The game itself is a fucking rush. Forrest keeps up with all of our insane traditions and superstitions to assure our victory—standing for the whole game, shaking our keys at kickoff, chanting for each first down, losing our goddamn minds whenever Prickly Pete visits our section.

Obviously, all of this works because when time runs down, with the marching band playing “The Final Countdown,” Desert City is up 24 to 20 over Southern Arizona, and the entire stadium explodes with noise.

Cristian grabs Forrest, yanking him across our row to hug the man like they’re blood brothers. Forrest, the only one who isn’t and wasn’t a student here, is cheering as loudly as the rest of us. When Cristian releases him, he turns back to me, eyes bright, and a dreamy smile on his lips.

Melina brushes her arm against mine and leans in close so I can hear her over the roar around us.

“And that’s the look, by the way,” she says as I turn toward her.

When I look back at Forrest, it’s plain as day. He’s willing to scream with my friends for a school he has no loyalty to, paint a green cartoon cactus on his face, and stand for over three hours on hard concrete just to avoid the insane risk that his butt in a seat would jinx our team.

I think this man would move mountains for me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

’tis the damn season (arizona’s version)

The morning after the game, I sleep in. I don’t remember the last time that happened when I wasn’t sick. Even better, when I do wake, I don’t feel the inexplicable guilt and anxiety telling me I should have been doing something else, that I’ve somehow fallen behind on an unknown task.